Miss Flicks

Freakier Friday review: Fans of the original will be very happy

I am a massive fan of 2003’s Freaky Friday – it had a huge influence on my personality 20 years ago – so I really wanted the sequel, Freakier Friday, to be good. My expectations were low because Disney’s long-awaited follow-ups are usually a disappointment (I’m looking at you, Hocus Pocus 2 and Disenchanted) so I’m thrilled to report that I thoroughly enjoyed this.

In the 2003 film, Anna Coleman (Lindsay Lohan) swaps bodies with her mum Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis) until they help each other and perform a selfless act. Now, Anna has a teenage daughter Harper (Julia Butters) and is about to get married to a British man named Eric (Manny Jacinto). Harper and her soon-to-be stepsister Lily (Sophia Hammons) do not get along and there is resentment over a plan to move to England after the wedding. We have a four-way swap this time: Anna swaps with Harper and Tess swaps with Lily.

It is a blast watching Lohan and Curtis playing teenagers. They are friends and clearly had the best time in their quirky outfits on set, and this shines through on screen. They’re so good at the physical comedy and Curtis in particular throws herself into it. She transforms how she walks, talks and holds herself and it’s inherently funny seeing a 66-year-old playing a high schooler.

Jordan Weiss’ script cracked me up often. Although it’s set in the present and feels current, the sense of humour is aimed at millennials like me and fellow fans of the original. There are some great gags in here and comments about youth and ageing (such as Facebook being “a database for old people”). It can be hard to keep track of who is who sometimes but that’s to be expected with four swaps!

You can follow and enjoy this film if you haven’t seen its predecessor, but I would never advise this as the original is so fun! Do yourself a favour and watch it first. A lot of references, cameos and callbacks will go over your head and you won’t have the best experience. In particular, Chad Michael Murray‘s storyline won’t make a ton of sense and won’t be anywhere near as funny if you don’t know what happened to his character Jake before. He’s in it more than I expected and is incorporated into the wider story well.

However, I have some notes. The sequence where they discover the body swap isn’t as funny as the original, even though there are four of them. Also, I appreciate that they did something different with the swap instead of using fortune cookies again, but it isn’t as good, and Tess didn’t really deserve to be included. Plus, everything is resolved a bit too quickly after the big conflict, although it would have taken forever to resolve all four storylines in a satisfying way. But these are little niggles in the grand scheme of things.

My one big issue is Pink Slip’s performance of Take Me Away (the song from the original). There is no narrative reason for them to perform that song, but it obviously had to be included to please fans of the original (like me). It feels shoehorned into the story, in a place that makes no sense, and the camera cuts away from the performance so much! It should have been a full performance in the credits, before the blooper reel. Also, they’ve made slight changes to the song and the awesome riff isn’t the same. I’m all for making tweaks so it’s not a carbon copy, but only make it different if it’s an improvement. This was a downgrade in my eyes.

My expectations for Freakier Friday were pretty low but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I haven’t laughed out loud that much in ages.

In cinemas from Friday 8th August and on Disney+ from Wednesday 12th November